05-26-09 by dugan
05-27 update: The NRDC has agreed to remove itself from the "advisory
committee" for the pro-oil sands study described below and and denounce
or at least dispute the study’s findings. An e-mail sent this morning by an NRDC attorney said: "Just to let you
know that NRDC is off the Advisory Committee on all electronic versions
of the report. We are working on a public criticism of the report which
we were doing in any case and a formal withdrawal from the Advisory
Committee."
What do the coal industry and the tar sands of southwestern Canada have
in common? Good friends in high places, gigantic lobbying budgets and
greenwashed slogans (like "clean coal"). The U.S. coal industry has extorted a few billion dollars in stimulus bucks and is poised to get many billions more
as its price for support of the energy bill in Congress. And both
industries are pushing a national-security argument that filthy,
destructive fuels produced in North America are better than buying oil
from OPEC. It’s a false choice, forcing the argument away from
conservation, efficiency and renewable power.
Coal and tar sands are Whack-a-Moles of industry, fending off the
mallet of common sense with paid defenders in think tanks
and elected office.
In some ways, oil sands are a worse problem than coal. Coal mining can
at least be stopped and started. But the huge industrial processes that
extract a thick, tar-like bitumen from tar sands (now called "oil
sands," which sounds nicer and cleaner) take years and a fortune to
construct. So investors want a guarantee that they won’t be stopped by
global-warming curbs or by declining demand for their heavy,
dirty-to-process and undesirable oil.
Assurance to investors appears to be the main point of a puzzling study, "Canadian Oil Sands," (large pdf here)
issued this month by the Council on Foreign Relations. Its main bullet
points in favor of environmentally destructive, water polluting,
carbon-emitting oil sands development are:
"1. Oil revenues empower exporting states whose interests often con-
flict with U.S. interests.
2. U.S. economic growth is hurt by oil price volatility.
3. U.S. economic growth is hurt by wealth transfers to some oil produc-
ing states.
4. Barriers to well-functioning oil markets, including but not restricted
to price manipulation by OPEC or by national governments, raise oil
prices and hence hurt the U.S. economy.
5. The United States is potentially vulnerable to supply disruptions
resulting from states’ decisions to withhold oil supplies from world
markets or from damage to oil supply chains by nonstate actors or
natural disasters.
6. Dependence on oil from unstable regions may necessitate military
expenditures to ameliorate risk."
In other words, politics trumps the environment; the only
alternative to imported oil is letting U.S. oil companies spew carbon
dioxide, ruin Canadian water supplies and rip to pieces perhaps
thousands of square miles of Canadian forest and prairie. Conservation,
efficiency and renewable power sources are dismissed in a few sentences
as pie in the sky, even though wind power, for instance, is now cheaper
than processing a nastier version of crude oil from tar sands.
Why the heck is the Council on Foreign Relations, a foreign policy
think tank, even writing a paper like this, full of excuses for a much
dirtier alternative to drilled oil? Could it be that its commercial
"members" (i.e. financial supporters) are heavy on oil and related
companies, including Chevron, Exxon, BP, Shell, Total S.A., Halliburton
and Duke Energy? Also financial companies that were once all-powerful,
including AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan
Chase and UBS. The folks who invented "Drill, baby, drill," and the
enablers that finance them.
The oil sands study’s "advisory committee" is listed on the last
page of the report. It includes Exxon, Chevron, hedge funds, other
financial companies and…the NRDC, the same so-called environmental
organization that went along with the coal subsidies in the
Congressional energy bill and has taken contributions from BP, Conoco
and Shell (see "Green Inc.," by Catherine MacDonald)
I sent a copy of the Council on Foreign Relations study to Tyson
Slocum, energy director at Public Citizen. "This is crazy" was his
response.
Tyson e-mailed some folks he knows at the NRDC, asking why they participated, and thus implicitly approved of the result.
Here’s
the e-mail series, with the names of the NRDC responder removed, since
I didn’t ask their permission. Tyson nails their evasions.
From: Tyson Slocum [mailto:[email protected]]
Subject: Tar sandsHi ,
I read with interest the recent Council on Foreign Relations report on
Canada’s Tar Sands which concludes, among other things, that:
"For the near future, the economic and security value of oil sands
expansion will likely outweigh the climate damages that the oil sands
create-but climate concerns cannot and must not be ignored, and will
become more important over time. U.S. policymakers should balance the
two goals by working with Canada to promote strong incentives to cut
the emissions associated with each barrel produced from the oil sands,
without directly discouraging production itself."
http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Oil_Sands_CSR47.pdf
NRDC is a member of the Council’s "Advisory Committee" for the Canadian
Oil Sands project (along with Exxon, Chevron and others), so I assume
that NRDC signed off on this endorsement of tar sands development.
Is the messaging of this CFR report endorsing the concept of not
"directly discouraging [tar sands] production" consistent with NRDC’s
position? Thanks for any info you can provide to help explain this.
Thanks!
Best,
Tyson Slocum, Director
Public Citizen’s Energy Program
The NRDC reply:
Hi Tyson,
The advisory committee does not mean endorsement of the report – it
states that at the bottom of the advisory committee page of the report.
The person who participated in this for NRDC …has markets expertise
and is not part of our tar sands team. NRDC’s tar sands and dirty fuels
teams were not involved in this report.
We do not support the report’s findings regarding the need to develop
tar sands. As we’ve discussed before, our position on tar sands is that
the climate and other environmental considerations are too large to see
any value in tar sands expansion. We continue to stand firmly against
expansion of tar sands oil development.
Best, (deleted)
And Tyson fires back:
I’m pretty confused. NRDC’s tar sands policy experts were not
involved with a "Canadian Oil Sands Advisory Committee"? Then why are
non-tar sands NRDC experts on a "Canadian Oil Sands Advisory
Committee"? Will NRDC issue a statement blasting this report’s
conclusions, and ask to be removed from the CFR’s "Canadian Oil Sands
Advisory Committee"? You do understand that CFR (and Exxon and Chevron)
benefit mightily from having NRDC’s name on this report, regardless of
the fine print disclaimer. NRDC is being used to provide Exxon and
Chevron cover on a report that endorses expanded tar sands development.
This is pretty darn serious, and I’m afraid pointing to fine print at
the bottom of one page in a 60+ page document isn’t sufficient. Public
Citizen would like to see a public action from NRDC in response to this
very, very damaging report that – like it or not – has NRDC’s seal of
approval on it.
Well, at least one mole got whacked.